Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for cleaning textile covering materials, including upholstery, carpets, rugs, wall to wall carpeting and the like, by an apparatus which comprises a spray jet for spraying a cleaning fluid onto the textile covering material and a suction nozzle for removal of dirt-laden fluid. More particularly, this invention is directed to an apparatus for cleaning large-scale textile coverings, especially carpets and wall to wall carpeting, with at least one spray nozzle connected to a fresh water conduit and a suction jet connected to a dirty water receptacle, which apparatus is provided with suction turbines powered by electric motors whose suction pipes are connected with the interior of a dirty water receptacle.
Such equipment is well known, i.e., carpets or wall to wall carpeting are cleaned with them in such a way that fresh water, in some instances heated or mixed with a cleaning solvent, is sprayed under high pressure on the carpet and is vacuumed up after a relatively short time of acting upon it. The vacuuming is done by using a suction jet which is connected to the dirty water receptacle mentioned above. By using suction turbines in the dirty water receptacle, a vacuum is created whereby the air current which flows steadily back to the dirty water receptacle pulls back the dirty water in single droplets when the suction nozzle is placed on the carpet or wall to wall carpeting. In this way, a good suction effect is achieved. The dirty water accumulates in the dirty water receptacle and is drawn off or pumped out from time to time.
This type of equipment is commercially available as compact units with adjustable suction nozzle connected via flexible hoses. Available equipment of this type suffers from a series of disadvantages which seriously affect optimum performance.
It has been proved that, for instance, in order to obtain a sufficient vacuum, exceptionally high powered suction turbines with corresponding strong motors must be used. In known models each turbine is equipped with its own motor.
All suction turbines combined act upon the same interior space of the dirty water receptacle and their effect on each other has proven detrimental in terms of efficiency. Furthermore, this type of use of suction turbines is quite expensive and leads to high production costs for the entire equipment. Another disadvantage of the existing equipment consists in that the dirty water receptacle has to be emptied out from time to time which means that the accumulating dirty water has to be drawn off or pumped out. Since the machinery has to be kept mobile to a certain extent, the dirty water receptacle cannot be designed unreasonably large. The discharge of the dirty water receptacle after cleaning large areas interrupts the working process too frequently.
It is an object of this invention to provide improved equipment of the type described above which is improved in respect of its suction power and of a means for the discharge of dirt-laden fluid whereby effective and continuous performance of the cleaning function can be achieved with concomitant reduction in the cost of apparatus manufacture.